Hi everyone,
Came across this website doing some research on inquisitor.
I'm a designer for a small (very) videogame studio in the UK.
I was wondering if I could shoot some questions at you guys in regards to opinions/reactions/expectations for a iOS inquisitor game.
Currently we are looking at a narrative driven squad based game that is NOT turn based.
1. What is your reaction to a iOS inquisitor game to be made in the future?
2. What part of inquisitor is important to maintain for a videogame version?
3. Is creating your own characters more important than having preset characters that fit the narrative and have their own fleshed out history and relationships that develop during the game?
4. Would you like a inquisitor novel converted to a game or would you prefer a story made from the ground up to fit a videogame structure?
5. Any questions you want to throw at us?
1. What is your reaction to a iOS inquisitor game to be made in the future?Mostly apprehensive. I'd like to be hopeful that it might give the game some positive press, but I think the essence of Inquisitor at least partly relies on things that can't be transferred a video game. (And that's even if I ignore how GW are likely to approach the whole subject).
Inquisitor isn't quite a pen and paper RPG, but it's much like comparing P&P RPGs to video game RPGs - they're just not the same.
A VG based RPG can only let things develop as they've already been programmed to, so you can't suddenly decide to be British any time you feel like it (http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20071119) (while this link is not particularly NSFW, other parts of this webcomic are).
Part of the biggest joys of Inquisitor as a player or GM is that it has the freedom to let people completely subvert your expectations.
2. What part of inquisitor is important to maintain for a videogame version?Of the points I think a VG RPG could actually retain of Inquisitor, I shall have to quote PrecinctOmega:
QuoteInquisitor is a wargame with the brakes off: a bare-back, white-knuckle ride that takes all the bits you like best about tabletop wargames (the rich context, the dark themes, the shock of conflict) and roleplay games (colourful individuals, the fate of the galaxy hanging by a thread, sudden changes of personal fortune in the time it takes to pull a trigger) and throws them into a single package. It's like a cooperative novel and a competitive action movie rolled up into one thing. It's wargaming for poets. It's falling to your knees in a sea of corpses, an empty stubber in one hand and a bloody chainsword in the other, screaming "If this is heresy, it feels SO GOOD!"
If you can pull off that kind of effect despite the natural limitation on how much creativity the player can actually be extended by the programming, then you could have something pretty solid.
3. Is creating your own characters more important than having preset characters that fit the narrative and have their own fleshed out history and relationships that develop during the game?Creating my own characters is an important part of Inquisitor for me, but VG RPGs can't achieve that properly. It's all options and sliders, picking out a "character" from those which the programmer pre-imagined.
Ultimately, the characters having a well-developed character is more important to me than hollow half characters that aren't really my own work. So, the latter.
4. Would you like a inquisitor novel converted to a game or would you prefer a story made from the ground up to fit a videogame structure?The latter. Working to a novel would put the plot on rails and spoil the ending.
Also, many Inquisitor novels are written by Dan Abnett, and I'm not a fan of his approach to the universe.
5. Any questions you want to throw at us?What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
While I fundamentally agree with everything Marco has just said, I would add that I believe a fully linear story in the Inquisitor setting is perfectly feasible.
For example, L.A. Noire was a linear story, with directed open-world investigation stages, but the player could not fundamentally alter the grander story, just the result of each case. Phelps was a straight cop, no matter how much a player wanted to player a crooked one.
It really all depends as much on what scale the story is taking place at (is it a small covert investigation into a local drug cartel in one city, or is it a sector-spanning tale of war and high politics?) and how much flexibility in storytelling you want to give the players.
Done right, any combination of either end of either of these scales will still be able to work in the setting.
Of course iOS does have it's limits, as well as the size of your studio.
Something I wonder might work best at that sort of level would be a game positioning the player as an Inquisitor who strategises rather than being in the action himself. Such a game would run similar to the management aspects of the latest XCOM, where you direct the advancements of your agents, then send them into the field to investigate X, Y and Z. And of course perm-death for agents when you send the wrong ones or not enough of them on dangerous missions. In this instance the players gets the creative aspect of naming teams of agents and advancing their experience to create specialised operatives, each with their own evolving backstory of what missions they've undertaken – with Inquisitor's facing a wide range of threats it would allow for things like buffs when dealing with a particular cult, crime gang or alien spices that individual operative has faced before.
The more I think on it the more I'd want to play that game, but it would rely heavily of an extensive set of skill advances for agents as well as a large number of missions, perhaps with more than one on-going thread linking some of the missions to a single "big bad".
alas, i got as far as iOS .. remembered how heartbroken i am over WHQuest and stopped reading!
Androooooiiiiid!
Quote from: Heroka Vendile on July 01, 2013, 06:51:29 PMWhile I fundamentally agree with everything Marco has just said, I would add that I believe a fully linear story in the Inquisitor setting is perfectly feasible.
I'm perhaps not entirely clear. I think linear story telling based around the Inquisition could definitely be done very well*; however, it wouldn't be the same as Inquisitor to me.
Inquisitor, for me, is heavily defined by the fully flexible nature of its system. If I wanted to pull off many of the characters I've created in Inquisitor under most RPG rules, it would generally be the case they'd take years worth of levelling up and a lot of goodwill from the GM. Beyond that, in actual gameplay, I've had players totally surprise me (either as another player or the GM) and I've surprised myself a few times with unexpected solutions to problems.
That is Inquisitor to me. I don't think I'd feel the same about any video game, at least until the development of a seriously clever GMing AI.
However, I am perfectly willing to evaluate said games on their own merits.
*Still, I would remain apprehensive. Not because I think it warrants more cynicism than normal, but because I'm by default cynical about most developments of the WH40K canon. Unfortunately, money-making frequently takes over from actual quality. That said, it's the licensees that often seem to be doing the best work! There's little doubt FFG are doing better things than GW are these days.
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on July 01, 2013, 05:47:04 PM
1. What is your reaction to a iOS inquisitor game to be made in the future?
Mostly apprehensive. I'd like to be hopeful that it might give the game some positive press, but I think the essence of Inquisitor at least partly relies on things that can't be transferred a video game. (And that's even if I ignore how GW are likely to approach the whole subject).
Inquisitor isn't quite a pen and paper RPG, but it's much like comparing P&P RPGs to video game RPGs - they're just not the same.
A VG based RPG can only let things develop as they've already been programmed to, so you can't suddenly decide to be British any time you feel like it (http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20071119) (while this link is not particularly NSFW, other parts of this webcomic are).
Part of the biggest joys of Inquisitor as a player or GM is that it has the freedom to let people completely subvert your expectations.
2. What part of inquisitor is important to maintain for a videogame version?
Of the points I think a VG RPG could actually retain of Inquisitor, I shall have to quote PrecinctOmega:
QuoteInquisitor is a wargame with the brakes off: a bare-back, white-knuckle ride that takes all the bits you like best about tabletop wargames (the rich context, the dark themes, the shock of conflict) and roleplay games (colourful individuals, the fate of the galaxy hanging by a thread, sudden changes of personal fortune in the time it takes to pull a trigger) and throws them into a single package. It's like a cooperative novel and a competitive action movie rolled up into one thing. It's wargaming for poets. It's falling to your knees in a sea of corpses, an empty stubber in one hand and a bloody chainsword in the other, screaming "If this is heresy, it feels SO GOOD!"
If you can pull off that kind of effect despite the natural limitation on how much creativity the player can actually be extended by the programming, then you could have something pretty solid.
3. Is creating your own characters more important than having preset characters that fit the narrative and have their own fleshed out history and relationships that develop during the game?
Creating my own characters is an important part of Inquisitor for me, but VG RPGs can't achieve that properly. It's all options and sliders, picking out a "character" from those which the programmer pre-imagined.
Ultimately, the characters having a well-developed character is more important to me than hollow half characters that aren't really my own work. So, the latter.
4. Would you like a inquisitor novel converted to a game or would you prefer a story made from the ground up to fit a videogame structure?
The latter. Working to a novel would put the plot on rails and spoil the ending.
Also, many Inquisitor novels are written by Dan Abnett, and I'm not a fan of his approach to the universe.
5. Any questions you want to throw at us?
What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Thank you for the reply MacroSkull
you are right that as a VG RPG we are limited in what we can achieve espically on iOS and the size of our team. As much as I would love to make a game that gave huge amounts of freedom to a GM and multiple players its something that is way beyond our scope unfortunatly.
But the idea of "subvert your expectations." is something I will hold onto.
Regarding your question
African or European?
If you think of anything else fire away
thanks for your time
Quote from: Heroka Vendile on July 01, 2013, 06:51:29 PM
While I fundamentally agree with everything Marco has just said, I would add that I believe a fully linear story in the Inquisitor setting is perfectly feasible.
For example, L.A. Noire was a linear story, with directed open-world investigation stages, but the player could not fundamentally alter the grander story, just the result of each case. Phelps was a straight cop, no matter how much a player wanted to player a crooked one.
It really all depends as much on what scale the story is taking place at (is it a small covert investigation into a local drug cartel in one city, or is it a sector-spanning tale of war and high politics?) and how much flexibility in storytelling you want to give the players.
Done right, any combination of either end of either of these scales will still be able to work in the setting.
Of course iOS does have it's limits, as well as the size of your studio.
Something I wonder might work best at that sort of level would be a game positioning the player as an Inquisitor who strategises rather than being in the action himself. Such a game would run similar to the management aspects of the latest XCOM, where you direct the advancements of your agents, then send them into the field to investigate X, Y and Z. And of course perm-death for agents when you send the wrong ones or not enough of them on dangerous missions. In this instance the players gets the creative aspect of naming teams of agents and advancing their experience to create specialised operatives, each with their own evolving backstory of what missions they've undertaken – with Inquisitor's facing a wide range of threats it would allow for things like buffs when dealing with a particular cult, crime gang or alien spices that individual operative has faced before.
The more I think on it the more I'd want to play that game, but it would rely heavily of an extensive set of skill advances for agents as well as a large number of missions, perhaps with more than one on-going thread linking some of the missions to a single "big bad".
Thanks for the reply Heroka Vendile
I love the management idea and perm-death is always fun. As a team the inquisters band is something we are very interested in.
Quote from: greenstuff_gav on July 01, 2013, 07:05:04 PM
alas, i got as far as iOS .. remembered how heartbroken i am over WHQuest and stopped reading!
Androooooiiiiid!
Android is always on the cards :)
Quote from: UberChew on July 02, 2013, 10:55:34 AMAs a team the inquisters band is something we are very interested in.
I'm not altogether sure how much one can achieve with an iOS-based platform, but if you want to give players more of a feel that these are "their" characters, you could offer something like a Four Temperament Ensemble (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourTemperamentEnsemble) or Four Philosophy Ensemble (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourPhilosophyEnsemble) for the Inquisitor and his/her immediate retinue, and borrowing archetypes from the Random Henchman Generator (or Dark Heresy!), to define the different types of people the Inquisitor might surround himself with.
Then again, I have no idea how much depth you can go into with the platform you're using.
if i was to pitch an Inquisitor squad-based game (oh gods.. Squad Command. such potential that became tedious so very quickly!) i'd look at Fallout; you could gain experience and mod the statistics of the crew, affect how they handled in game and write an arcing story; admittedly you couldn't do the scale of a Fallout game on a mobile device, but a single plot with maybe 3 "paths" per plot point where the game diverges and a sandbox-y area where you could wander around out of the plot would be my #1 choice
while making characters (and modelling 'em!) is a huge part of inquisitor, for a video game i'd be tempted to have a half-dozen guys you could alter rather than trying to shoehorn player ideas into exisiting art (this is an ex-escher ganger... hm, this playthrough i want to explore shooting skills. next, melee. hey, how about a whole crew of combat specialists?! This psyker'd be cool as a Pyromancer. maybe next time i'll push the Telepath route...)
Quote from: Koval on July 02, 2013, 07:02:38 PM
Quote from: UberChew on July 02, 2013, 10:55:34 AMAs a team the inquisters band is something we are very interested in.
I'm not altogether sure how much one can achieve with an iOS-based platform, but if you want to give players more of a feel that these are "their" characters, you could offer something like a Four Temperament Ensemble (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourTemperamentEnsemble) or Four Philosophy Ensemble (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourPhilosophyEnsemble) for the Inquisitor and his/her immediate retinue, and borrowing archetypes from the Random Henchman Generator (or Dark Heresy!), to define the different types of people the Inquisitor might surround himself with.
Then again, I have no idea how much depth you can go into with the platform you're using.
Thanks for the reply Koval
you are right that the platform will have limitations and obviously time/money is also a factor.
One of the reasons I came on here was to get a reaction from inquistor players about such a game and also what you see as important to retain from the tabletop to the Videogame with the knowledge that restrictions will play a part in what is achieveable.
Thank you for the reading some really interesting stuff.
Regarding the retinue and what MarcoSkull said before, having player generated characters that are limited by tech is probably less worth while than having a dedicated fleshed out group that fit the typical archetypes for the player to choose from.
My worry with an Inquisitor computer game is that it would miss the "well, you failed, but it was cool, so you succeed anyway!" element. Example - in the first ever Inq. battle report, Malicant the Redemptionist jumped from one catwalk to another. Having been given an extra dice of distance on the basis he was a lunatic and super-committed, he still missed - just. Both players and the GM were disappointed, so decided he managed to catch the edge of the catwalk, kept his Eviscerator, but lost his laspistols. Near failures can't be successes in a computer game - it loses the GM property. Admittedly, it gains much - convenience, perhaps speed of play, stuff like that, but there you go.
1. What is your reaction to a iOS inquisitor game to be made in the future?
Very positive. There's a wealth of material to go at.
2. What part of inquisitor is important to maintain for a videogame version?
Story, and an element of GM fiat. As per DapperAnarchist's post, failure doesn't always have to mean failure. I would also like to see a mix of clue hunting, action, and adventure. Part of inquisitor is that which goes on in the margins, not just at the end of the barrel of a gun. I'd challenge you to look at Dark Heresy, and the other 40k RPG books as well, to get a rounded feel for the Inquisition and its works.
3. Is creating your own characters more important than having preset characters that fit the narrative and have their own fleshed out history and relationships that develop during the game?
My preference would be my own character, the reality is that archetypes would be simpler and more consistent in implementation, and would hopefully empower you as a business to tell an interesting story. I'd suggest having three archetypes - puritan / warrior, psyker / neutral, radical / "tech" , tech being daemonswords, and similar proscribed items.
4. Would you like a inquisitor novel converted to a game or would you prefer a story made from the ground up to fit a videogame structure?
Story for videogame. I'd sooner have a quality product than "play" Ravenor - there's no reason you shouldn't include the odd character from Canon though.
5. Any questions you want to throw at us?
I guess - can you promise not to worry about it being an uber pretty 3d marathon with the gameplay being largely damp squib. Plenty of games have reasonably deep gameplay on iOS without needing the buffer of PERRRTY 3d graphics - Angry Birds, PvZ, Monster Wars, all operate on solid gamplay foundations. Social games I can think of would include Marvel Avengers Alliance. An X-Com style game would appeal, with the right kind of narrative woven in.
Quote from: UberChew on July 03, 2013, 11:06:29 AM
Regarding the retinue and what MarcoSkull said before, having player generated characters that are limited by tech is probably less worth while than having a dedicated fleshed out group that fit the typical archetypes for the player to choose from.
If you're going to take that approach, it's always a good idea to look at how other videogame RPGs handle party members, and how the archetypes they slot into complement the strengths and weaknesses of the main player character (bonus points if you still end up with one of the Four Whatever Ensembles that I linked earlier).
It may also be a good idea to compare and contrast different characters that fit the same archetype, so that you don't end up with a sort of dissatisfying "mould" for your own characters -- see also An Adventurer is You (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnAdventurerIsYou) and what sorts of characters end up in which roles.
I realise that a lot of this is probably glaringly obvious, but nonetheless it's still worth bearing it in mind :P
Quote from: DapperAnarchist on July 03, 2013, 02:05:21 PM
My worry with an Inquisitor computer game is that it would miss the "well, you failed, but it was cool, so you succeed anyway!" element. Example - in the first ever Inq. battle report, Malicant the Redemptionist jumped from one catwalk to another. Having been given an extra dice of distance on the basis he was a lunatic and super-committed, he still missed - just. Both players and the GM were disappointed, so decided he managed to catch the edge of the catwalk, kept his Eviscerator, but lost his laspistols. Near failures can't be successes in a computer game - it loses the GM property. Admittedly, it gains much - convenience, perhaps speed of play, stuff like that, but there you go.
A good point, due to obvious restrictions multiple outcomes from an event in a videogame are costly, but we do want positive and negative outcomes to events based on how you perform that are not just succed or fail and more in keeping witht the idea that if you do well X occurs but if you do badly Y occurs.
Quote from: Dosdamt on July 03, 2013, 05:33:55 PM
Story, and an element of GM fiat. As per DapperAnarchist's post, failure doesn't always have to mean failure. I would also like to see a mix of clue hunting, action, and adventure. Part of inquisitor is that which goes on in the margins, not just at the end of the barrel of a gun. I'd challenge you to look at Dark Heresy, and the other 40k RPG books as well, to get a rounded feel for the Inquisition and its works.
The reason my team is looking at inquisitor as an idea is for these reasons that there is alot an inquisitor gets up to that does not involve killing everything on site.
Quote from: Dosdamt on July 03, 2013, 05:33:55 PM
My preference would be my own character, the reality is that archetypes would be simpler and more consistent in implementation, and would hopefully empower you as a business to tell an interesting story. I'd suggest having three archetypes - puritan / warrior, psyker / neutral, radical / "tech" , tech being daemonswords, and similar proscribed items.
We are looking at the retinue and the "types" like you describe and how they could effect the game if in the inquisitors party
That's good. A few more thoughts
Please dont have the action be like the QTE action in some games. It isn't fun. Some manual shooting / psyking / hacking would be better and the closer to real time the better. However, having turn based isometric action would be interesting, and again something I'd be all for as I think that could work exceedingly well based on the Inquisitor ruleset / concept, factoring in the ability to acquire henchmen - and create others .... (daemonhosts, daemonweapons, and the like).
Competitive conversations / interrogations would be neat, though I don't know how difficult to implement.